RE: [malware-list] [RFC 0/5] [TALPA] Intro to a linux interface for on access scanning

Press, Jonathan
2008-08-08T13:11:20Z

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rene Herman [mailto:rene.herman@keyaccess.nl]
> Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 8:35 AM
> To: Press, Jonathan
> Cc: Eric Paris; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; Alan Cox; malware-
> list@lists.printk.net
> Subject: Re: [malware-list] [RFC 0/5] [TALPA] Intro to a linux
interface for on
> access scanning

> > Since I earn my living on the basis of users, clueless or not, I've
> > gotten into the habit of just taking them as they come and trying to
go
> > out of my way to not refer to them as clueless -- except in a few
> > specific and particularly annoying cases.
>
> You say that as though you feel that calling someone clueless were a
bad
> thing. There are tons of subjects I'm completely and utterly clueless
> about and very happily so.

Well, in all honesty, sometimes when I think of someone as clueless,
there is a certain negative emotion that goes along with it. However,
the point is more that THEY don't like to be called clueless -- both
because, for some reason they take it as an insult, and also because
there are many out there who "know enough to be dangerous" and think
they know more than they really do. So I have to be careful not to say
anything to them that sounds like I think that, and to make sure that
people in my group have the same discipline.

> > But that's not my point. My point is that Linux has become a
> > commercially viable environment with a lot of enterprise users, with
a
> > significant number of enterprises are standardizing on it, or at
least
> > officially supporting/allowing/encouraging its use. Because of
that,
> > for example, we have a significant number of user issues coming in
that
> > indicate that there are actually plenty of clueless Linux users,
whether
> > the OS was intended for them or not.
>
> But not users with root access, which is the context in which my own
> remark was. Enterprise users in corporations are not what I call the
> desktop; I'd generally call those workstations, with the desktop being
> your average home PC with the enormous amounts of cheap and buggy
> hardware and the definite lack of central IT management.

You would be surprised how many users with root access are also
clueless. I used the word "enterprise" very broadly. It applies to
large companies/institutions with sophisticated IT departments, but it
also applies to small to medium organizations who said to themselves,
"Gee what's this Linux thing I keep hearing about -- maybe we ought to
get one of those." And they end up with administrators who also don't
really know all the ins and outs they need to in order to create a
secure environment.

In a way, it's a price that Linux has paid for its growing acceptance.
The user community is not what it used to be.

> It's also dependent on country. Over here in the Netherlands,
corporate
> adoption "on the workstation" is very low (and seemingly dropping
again
> after some initial attempts in local government) and adoption on the
> desktop is for all intents and purposes 0. It's different especially
in
> eastern-europe.

I can't speak about every different country, but I would say that you
are right about Eastern Europe. But also in the US and Canada we have
plenty of adoption on the workstation.

> > The fact that they are there is the main reason that Red Hat and
Novell,
> > for example (at least by my observation from the outside -- I can't
> > speak at all about how they see if from the inside) seem to be
putting
> > the bulk of their efforts into their enterprise editions, as opposed
to
> > their traditional technologist editions.
> >
> > The bottom line, then, is that there ARE way more clueless Linux
users
> > out there than there used to be, which makes them a) vulnerable to
> > losses by virtue of their own mistakes, and b) vectors for the
spread of
> > malware. Which is kind of why we're here.
>
> Right, so that, then, is a threat model. I myself believe you are here
> mostly to guard against 11-year old girls installing infected
> screensavers of horses which given the fairly low adoption of Linux by
> 11-year old girls says something about my view of things.
>
> But, yes, as I myself said as well, it might be sensible to discuss
this
> issue simply _as if_ lots of users were brushing their My Little
Pony's
> while waiting for their kernels to finish compiling if you're
designing
> something that _should_ protect them if they were.

There are many gradations of users between the kernel pro and the
11-year-old girl.

One is the guy right out of college who really likes computers and he
gets a job at a place where they use Linux, and he does a web search and
finds this really cool application that might help him do his job
better, so he installs it on the spot. Uh-oh.

One is the guy who's been working there for a while and the head of IT,
tired of spending so much on Windows, tells him to install Linux on a
few machines, so he follows the instructions and he's now the
administrator.

The fact is that there are MILLIONS out there, and when you have
millions of anything, you are going to have lots of different kinds of
behavior that are hard to predict ahead of time.